Thursday, September 18, 2008

Is James Bond religious?


I got this from a Lutheran pastor's blog I just started reading:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/faith/2008/04/was-james-bond.html

The Timesonline blog piece asks, "Does James Bond have faith in anything but himself?"

The author goes on to cite The James Bond Dossier:
Some things are regarded as good: loyalty, fortitude, a sense of responsibility, a readiness to regard one’s safety, even one’s life, as less important than the major interests of one’s organization and one’s country. Other things are regarded as bad: tyranny, readiness to inflict pain on the weak or helpless, the unscrupulous pursuit of money or power. These distinctions aren’t excitingly novel, but they are important, and as humanist and/or Christian as the average reader would want. They constitute quite enough in the way of an ethical frame of reference, assuming anybody needs or looks for or ought to have one in adventure fiction at all. (From The James Bond Dossier 1965)

The piece barely digs into the issue, but it raises an interesting question. Is James Bond religious? We don't know. And, unless the keepers of the canon add something to the storyline, we'll probably never know.

In case they ever give James a religious subplot, I'd like to take a guess:
He's a Catholic.

Your guesses?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

he's an atheist. duh.

Anonymous said...

My guess would be Anglican/Protestant because of his possible Scottish background. Same traditions, half the guilt.

Anonymous said...

The man is Amish. - I.F.